A normative approach to the definition of primary health care

Primary care is the subject of many pronouncements and many recommendations for change in the literature on health care organization and delivery. Heretofore, there has been no attempt to assess the degree of agreement on the meaning of the term. This paper reports on a normative process used to construct 92 statements about important elements of primary care, and to rank these statements according to their relative degrees of importance in primary care. Three panels--nationally recognized "experts" on primary care, consumers, and public health nurses and social workers--participated in the development as well as the ranking of the statements. The rankings of the national experts are discussed in detail, and brief comparisons are made with the rankings of the consumer and public health worker panels. Experts gave a high ranking to the statements concerned directly with medical services and their linkages. All gave attention to equality and patient dignity. Consumers stressed the need to improve access to primary care services. Public health workers emphasized improvement in both access and the quality of the relationship between patients and providers. The overall findings suggest that increasing the base of participation in primary care planning may bring greater attention to patient defined needs, and that broadening of medical care objectives from medical care to a more inclusive health care is not imminent.